WHY WAS THE OT WRITTEN IN HEBREW & THE NT IN GREEK?

[Jayne]

On 7/26/2022 at 1:21 PM, Leonardo Von said:

I don't agree that the New Testament was all written in Greek. After all, why would a Israelite write to other Israelites in Greek? For instance, the letter of James, Hebrews. Consider that the Israelites value so much the Hebraic (Act 22:2).

Brother, I don't feel that Acts 22:2 is showing a preference for Hebrew.  These particular Jews had [in chapter 21] seen Paul with a Greek name Trophimus in Ephesus.  They "assumed" that Paul had brought the Gentile man into the Temple and defiled it.  It was not about language.

Yes, it wasn't until he spoke to them in Aramaic that they listened to him.  He called them, "brothers and fathers".  It wasn't  the language he spoke, but what he said.

It's just a given fact that the New  Testament was written in Koine Greek.  And a few hundred years before Jesus was even born, the Tanakh or Old Testament was translated into Koine Greek.

God moved the world at that time to do the historical things that were done:

• First, Alexander the Great required Koine Greek [a common Greek, no classical] to be spoken by ALL.  You could still maintain your own language but Koine Greek was spoken by everyone.
• Next, the Roman Empire built all those roads so that travel was MUCH easier and people went much farther than before.
• Because of these two things - an interest arose in Judaism and the one, true God.  Ergo, synagogues popped up everywhere and the Old Testament scriptures were studied heavily.

God prepared the world in this way for the coming of Jesus Christ.  If one can see that, they see a miraculous work of God.

The men who wrote the New Testament, I'm sure spoke more than one or even more than two languages, but to get the message to ALL - the common language of ALL was used.

 

 

[Bluedragon]

On 8/23/2022 at 11:40 AM, Leonardo Von said:

I believe that all the books of the New Testament was written in Hebrew. The problem is that, for some reasons, the original was lost and only stayed manuscripts translated to Greek.

While the New testament was being written ....the Romans and the Jews were condemning and exterminating Christians. In fact, so much so, most Christians had fled Jerusalem by 66 AD. The Jews were hell bent on eliminating the religion just as Jesus had said they would. The message was then taken to the gentiles ....Greek or Latin would have been the most used languages of the gentiles and not so much Hebrew ...It's easy to understand why the scribes working for Peter and Paul were writing letters to the surrounding churches in the languages they were accustomed  to.